Palestinian Embassy Safe Explosion

[jacobbiljo]

In the news this weekend was a story of an explosive anti tampering device being used in a safe of the Palestinian Authority embassy in Prague.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/01/01/palestinian-ambassador-to-czech-republic-jamel-al-jamal-killed-by-exploding-office-safe/

Is this a common or even heard about thing? In my years of interest with safes I have never heard of people going to this degree to protect the contents of a safe.
Shouldn't there be big warning labels to prevent people fatally deciding to touch sensitive explosives?

Edit: Fixed URL

[Riyame]

Your link is broken. You will have to use the URL tags.

[PhoneMan]

Here's a USA Today article on it: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/01/01/explosion-palestinian-diplomat-prague/4276535/

[LockManipulator]

And I thought those old safes with vials of tear gas would be bad to get a faceful of! Someone REALLY did not want the contents of that safe seen! I've never heard of this happening but man, am I going to be more careful on opening any sketchy safes

[GWiens2001]

***Note to self... Do NOT attempt to manipulate a safe belonging to the PLO.***

Gordon

[Oldfast]

Wow. That's really something. And that lengthy delay between the opening a explosion...
I'm assuming its' NORMAL user would've used that time span to disarm the explosive

[GWiens2001]

Wow. That's really something. And that lengthy delay between the opening a explosion...
I'm assuming its' NORMAL user would've used that time span to disarm the explosive

Or to run like He....

Gordon

[Neilau]

While it is true that some old safes had teargas, dyes and smoke bombs in them, these would only go off if forcible entry was attempted on the safe.

Reading the article, The guy had the safe open and was removing items from it. So he must of had the combination (key?). The booby trap seems to have been designed to go off when something was taken from the safe (pressure switch).

While there has been a lot of nastiness in the ME for the last 50 years, it is possible that the Palestinians might have booby trapped the safe but seeing that the diplomat had the combo/key, one would think he would also know if it was booby trapped.

The other explanation is that the safe was booby trapped by someone else.

I don’t think that we will ever know.

[tomjones]

Some month (1. July 2014) ago there was an more recent article of that topic in Austrian news paper.
The investigation have been closed, they are sure that no other person caused his death.
It was and is unclear whether he wanted to secure his safe during his moving to the new house.
The police asumes an accident.